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Obama: Worst President Ever? Topic

RUSH: Man, oh, man, I tell you, you talk about how the mighty have fallen, ladies and gentlemen. Did you see where Bill Clinton has said that Obama needs to keep his word about keeping our insurance plans if we like 'em? If you're Obama, can you imagine being lectured to about honesty and integrity from a convicted perjurer, Bill Clinton? My gosh, folks, I mean, literally how far has one fallen when that is the case?

How are you, my friends? Great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network. And three hours of broadcast excellence.

Here is Bill Clinton. This was this morning on the website Ozy.com, and a well-known correspondent Carlos Watson. The well-known correspondent Carlos Watson on Ozy.com. Have you ever heard of Ozy.com? Clinton was there having a discussion about problems with the Obamacare rollout. And here is Slick Willie.

CLINTON: For young people mostly, but not all young, who are in the individual market whose incomes are above 400% of the poverty level, they were the ones who heard the promise, "If you like what you got, you can keep it." I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let 'em keep what they got.

George Pataki, the ex-governor of New York, who, by the way, really liked my neckties when I had my TV show and requested a bunch. I sent them to him, never got a thank-you note. Well, he mighta sent one. I never got it. I get so much mail. Don't anybody send him a note, please. He probably did send a thank-you. I just didn't see it. It isn't any big deal.

He's got a piece in the New York Post today: "An Escape Hatch from Obamacare -- As Obamacare continues to crash, smaller businesses and their employees may have an escape hatch from many of the law’s worst features -- but the administration and its left-wing allies are trying to close the door. When Congress passed Obamacare, Republicans managed to secure important protections for 'self-insurance' that now provides a way for businesses to escape the most egregious parts of the law: Self-insured health plans are exempt from many of the taxes and mandates that Obamacare otherwise imposes on businesses and individuals."

Now, what is a self-insured plan? If you work at a business or if you are a business, what is a self-insured plan? "A self-insured health plan is one where the employer directly funds its own medical costs -- that is, rather than paying premiums to an insurance carrier to cover its employees, it sets aside the cash to cover anticipated expenses. (The business often hires an insurance company to manage employees’ claims, but the insurer isn’t actually selling insurance, just its claims-processing services)."

So in a business, say, let's take a business of a hundred people. A company will not buy health insurance for them and will not offer insurance as a benefit, but if the employee gets sick, has to go to the hospital, the business pays it. That's the benefit. The business pays the bill. The business pays the doctor. It's sort of like cash service, in a sense. I mean, just as a way of explaining this. A self-insured plan is one where the employer directly pays its own medical costs for the employee, not an insurance company. There is no middleman.

People in these plans right now are exempt from Obamacare, because they don't require insurance. There's no mandate. There's no penalty. There's no tax, and a lot of businesses -- I could name some, but I'm not gonna make targets out of 'em because they are being targeted now by the regime. The regime and the Democrat Party are going after these plans. The regime and the Democrat Party are making tracks right now to go after every business that does self-insure.

Now, according to George Pataki, "more than 60 percent of workers in large corporations and 80 percent of unions, along with 15 percent of workers in small businesses, are covered by self-insured plans. In fact, most of the 100 million workers now covered by self-insured plans don’t even know it. The differences to them are that minimal." It's an employee benefit. All they know is they've got health care. They know they've got dental. They know they've got a deductible. They know they've got a copay. They know they've got this, but they don't know that the business is directly paying for it rather than getting an insurance policy that they're all part of.

"The exemption from many ObamaCare rules will encourage more businesses to shift to self-insurance -- but there’s a nationwide drive to stop them. The White House is leading the charge to close what it calls the 'self-insurance loophole' with a laundry list of tactics that were spelled out in a paper published by the hyper-liberal Center for American Progress, titled 'The Threat of Self-Insured Plans Among Small Businesses.'"

Now, why would they care? Why would a left-wing website care? As long as people have insurance, as long as the employees are covered, why do they care how? And there is, again, another answer that if people just open their eyes, they'd understand what this is really all about, and it ain't health care. It's about control. It's about having power over people. It's about being able to deny you or grant you health care. You realize there are no death panels for people in self-insured plans. The self-insured plans do not generally require you not to eat or drink this or that. They just cover you, because there's no insurance policy in place.

RUSH: Okay. Let's see where we are here. We have 48, 49% of Americans on food stamps, or is it 49 million on food stamps? It's million, not percent, though. It's million, right? Okay. So let's just say 48 or 49 million on food stamps. We have 91.5 million Americans not working. By the way, that's not even counting the unemployment number. That 91 million, they're out of the labor force. They're gone. It's 91.5 million Americans not working and 48 million on food stamps.

The amount of jobs, the number of jobs percentage that have been converted from full time to part time is overwhelming, and the Associated Press says that 444,000 additional Americans on Medicaid is a success story? What this means is that more and more Americans are living in poverty. Medicaid is not Medicare. Medicare is health care for the elderly and the seasoned citizens. Medicaid is for the poor. How in the world...?

What kind of perspective must you have to equate 444,000 new Medicaid recipients with success? This is a national disaster! This is 91.5 million human beings not working.

There isn't work for them, and 48 million on food stamps. The percentage of people on Medicare? I think the number I saw was that at one time or another 70 million people are on Medicaid for a month or two 'cause they can't afford anything else.

There's nothing successful about any of this. This is a national disaster that is happening to this country. And for the AP to run around and have as their lead story today, which is gonna be all over the news sources for the low-information news consumer, a success story, 444,000 people sign up for the health care plan for the poor? What in the world is successful about that? (New Castrati impression) "Mr. Limbaugh, this just goes to show that you have no compassion. The reason it's a success is the 444,000 people who wouldn't have health care, have it."

No!

It's that 444,000 people need it! That's the indictment of this regime. Well, they were able to sign up with no glitches, as opposed to signing up for Obamacare. Here is the dirty little secret, folks. The ultimate aim of Obama is to get everybody on Medicaid. That would qualify as socialized medicine, and I'm guaranteeing you this. All this chaos and all these problems that Obamacare/HealthCare.gov had, if the alternative is Medicaid?

RUSH: Betsy McCaughey -- who's one of the ranking analysts of socialist medicine, socialized medicine, be it Hillarycare or Obamacare -- has a piece at Investors.com, the old Investor's Business Daily, and headline of the piece says, "Think Obamacare Is Bad Now? It Gets Worse Next Year." Okay, now, what gets worse next year?

Well, here's how she starts the piece: "'Substandard' and 'cut-rate' is what President Obama calls the health plans that millions of Americans have lost, even though they wanted to keep them. Backpedaling on his promise that 'if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,' Obama is now telling Americans another whopper: The insurance they can get on Obamacare exchanges is a better deal. Don't believe him. On the exchanges, you may no longer be able to use the doctors and hospitals you prefer.

"Many exchange plans exclude the top-drawer academic hospitals like Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and New York Presbyterian in New York City. Instead, the law says exchange plans must cover care at 'essential community providers ... that serve predominantly low-income, medically underserved individuals.'" That's from the law itself. "That means clinics, public hospitals and hospitals largely serving the Medicaid community" is where the majority of exchange plans will work.

You do not get the top-drawer hospitals and clinics. Those are reserved for people who will pay out of their pocket and will not have insurance. "Yet the president claims that people losing their health plans and having to sign up on the exchanges will be getting a better deal," and he is. That's what Jay Carney was trying to say yesterday, as they continue to lie about this law. It's just astounding. They are compounding their one lie with another.

I mean, they're just continuing to tell lies here, and they sent Carney out to say yesterday, "Well, of course the president doesn't like what's going on here! He doesn't like these substandard plans that people had, and what is gonna happen here is that people, when they lose their plan and sign up they're gonna get a better deal. Who's opposed to that? So here's what they're defining as "getting a better deal." It's losing your doctor, losing your existing plan that you liked, now having to shop blind on a website that doesn't work for a health plan.

RUSH: The president's addressing the nation, ladies and gentlemen, on how he's gonna play dictator again and fix his health care problem. It was supposed to start exactly a half hour ago. He just started three minutes ago, opening up on the Philippines. He finished his remarks on the Philippines right as this program began. So we're gonna JIP it. Here's the president playing dictator.

OBAMA: -- the 1.5 million people. Of those 1.5 million people, 106,000 of them have successfully signed up to get covered. Another 396,000 have the ability to gain access to Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. That's been less reported on, but it shouldn't be. Americans who are having a difficult time, who are poor, many of them working, may have a disability --

RUSH: Folks, we know what he's gonna propose here. We're just doing this because I know the affiliates want to carry this stuff, so -- (crosstalk)

OBAMA: -- later today I'll be in Ohio where Governor Kasich, a Republican, has expanded Medicare under the Affordable Care Act --

RUSH: I can tell you what he's gonna do.

OBAMA: -- 275,000 Ohioans will ultimately be better off because of it. And if every governor followed suit, another 5.4 million Americans could gain access to health care next year. So, the bottom line is in just one month, despite all the problems that we've seen with the website, more than 500,000 Americans could know the security of health care by January 1st.

RUSH: And they've just been shafted based on what you're gonna propose here in a minute.

OBAMA: -- and it's significant.

RUSH: Five hundred thousand is significant?

OBAMA: That still leaves about one million Americans who successfully made it through the website, not qualified by insurance, but haven't picked a plan yet. And there's no question that if the website were working as it's supposed to, that number would be much higher --

RUSH: No.

OBAMA: -- of people who've actually enrolled.

RUSH: Not true.

OBAMA: So that's problem number one.

RUSH: People are shocked at what they found there.

OBAMA: Making sure the website is working the way it's supposed to. It's gotten a lot better over the last few weeks than it was on the first day, but we're working 24/7 to get it working for the vast majority of Americans.

RUSH: Can I ask a question here? Why would anybody believe what he says after the big lie about being able to keep -- (crosstalk)

OBAMA: -- concerns Americans who receive letters from their insurers that they may be losing the plans they bought in the old individual market --

RUSH: Yeah.

OBAMA: -- often because they no longer meet the law's requirements to cover basic benefits like prescription drugs or doctors visits. Now, as I indicated earlier, I completely get how upsetting this can be for a lot of Americans, particularly after assurances they heard from me that, if they had a plan that they liked, they could keep it. And to those Americans, I hear you loud and clear. I said that I would do everything we can to fix this problem, and today I'm offering an idea that will help do it. Already people who have plan that predate the Affordable Care Act can keep those plans if they haven't changed. That was already in the law. That's what's called a "grandfather clause." It was included in the law.

RUSH: Still continuing the lie, folks. (crosstalk)

OBAMA: -- to people whose plans have changed since the law took effect, and to people who bought plans since the law took effect. So state insurance commissioners still have the power to decide what plans can and can't be sold in their states, but the bottom line is insurers can extend current plans that would otherwise be canceled into 2014, and Americans whose plans have been canceled can choose to reenroll in the same kind of plan. We're also requiring insurers who extend current plans to inform their customers about two things: one, that protections -- what protections these renewed plans don't include. Number two, that the marketplace offers new options with better coverage and tax credits that might help you bring down the costs. So if you received one of these letters, I'd encourage you to take a look at the marketplace, even if the website isn't working as smoothly as it should be for everybody yet --

RUSH: There isn't --

OBAMA: -- a plan comparison tool that lets you browse costs for new plans near you is working just fine.

RUSH: Jeez.

OBAMA: Now, this fix won't solve every problem for every person, but it's gonna help a lot of people. Doing more will require more work with Congress. And I've said from the beginning I'm willing to work with Democrats and Republicans to fix problems as they arise.

RUSH: He's lying again.

OBAMA: This is an example of what I was talking about. We can always make this law work better. It is important to understand, though, that the old individual market was not working well. And it's important that we don't pretend that somehow that's a place worth going back to. Too often it works fine as long as you stay healthy. It doesn't work well when you're sick. So year after year Americans were routinely exposed to financial ruin or denied coverage due to minor preexisting conditions or dropped from coverage altogether even if they paid their premiums on time. That's one of the reasons we pursued this reform in the first place. And that's why I will not accept proposals that are just another brazen attempt to undermine or repeal the overall law and drag us back into a broken system.

We will continue to make the case, even the folks who choose to keep their own plans, that they should shop around in the new marketplace because there's a good chance that they'll be able to buy better insurance at lower cost. So we're gonna do everything we can to help the Americans who've received these cancellation notices, but I also want everybody to remember there are still 40 million Americans who don't have health insurance at all. I'm not gonna walk away from 40 million people who have the chance to get health insurance for the first time, and I'm not gonna walk away from something that has helped the cost of health care grow at its slowest rate in 50 years. So we're at the opening weeks of the project to build a better health care system for everybody, a system that will offer real financial security and peace of mind to millions of Americans.

It is a complex process. There are all kinds of challenges. I'm sure there will be additional challenges that come up. And it's important that we're honest and straightforward in terms of when we come up with a problem with these reforms and these laws that we address them. But we've gotta move forward on this. It took a hundred years for us to even get to the point where we could start talking about and implementing a law to make sure everybody's got health insurance. And my pledge to the American people is that we're gonna solve the problems that are there, we're gonna get it right, and the Affordable Care Act is going to work for the American people. So with that I'm gonna take your questions --

RUSH: All right, we're not gonna listen to questions because all of this is gobbledygook. Greetings, my friends, and welcoming. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute, Advanced Conservative Studies. Great to have you here. Through all of that gobbledygook, let me try to translate what you just heard. You would never know it, if you just listened to all that gobbledygook, you would never know that what Obama is doing is postponing the requirements that are forcing cancellations of your policies until after the elections.

He's doing two things: He's telling the insurance companies, as a dictator would, what they can and can't do or what they must or must not do, or what they have to and don't have to do. He is suggesting, for purely political purposes, that if you have your plan now and you like it, you can keep it for one more year so that you don't get any angrier at Democrats than you are now and vote against them next November.

If your plan has been canceled, he has just ordered the insurance company to make it available to you, so that you can go back and get that plan. The problem is that that plan was canceled precisely because it conflicts with his law, with Obamacare. So he has declared war against the insurance companies here and is making it veritably impossible for them to do business. This is purely political.

All of this gobbledygook is designed to make everybody think that somebody else came along and canceled your plan and he's going to come to the rescue now and give you your plan back, but just for a year -- and he reiterated the original lie. He told you that when he told you that you could keep your plan "unless there's a change in it." He never said "unless there's a change in it," so he's continuing the first lie -- well, the second lie to cover the first lie -- with this announcement today.

Well, that's it bad_luck. Just a few blurbs over the week from the #1 radio show in America and the most successful and listened to show in the history of the Republic.

I wish I had time to do more.

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I'll leave you with a short stack page. The short stack is the news sources Rush uses each and every day. Each story or comment, like I have posted, is tagged with a source or sources. All his comment are backed by a source.

My last post will be an example of todays source page called Rushes "Stack of Stuff".

Goodnight BL. Let me know the next time you want some Rush. We deliver.

the obamacare blunders are so bad no one even remembers the big bad republicans shut down the government only one month ago. sebelius caught on camera today with the healthcare.gov crashing... just awesome. opera gets some presidential medal from obama for calling obama critics racist... golden.

sooooooo f'ing hilarious. seriously when crackhead Rob Ford has better poll ratings than obama you have to admit your president sucks.